ARTICLES

After discussing theory regarding the consequences of technological change on employment, our aim is to test the possible job creation effect of business R&D expenditures, using a unique longitudinal database covering 677 European firms (1990-2008). The main outcome from the dynamic LSDVC (Least Squared Dummy Variable Corrected) estimate is the labour-friendly nature of companies’ R&D, the coefficient of which turns out to be statistically significant. However, the positive impact of R&D on employment is only detectable in services and high-tech manufacturing. This is something that should be borne in mind by European policy makers having employment as one of their aims.

According to a wide literature, oil has a negative effect on the level of democracy because of induced economic and political distortions. At the same time, however, oil fosters economic development and people’s general life conditions. Using 30 years of international data on 34 oil countries, we show that the total effect is negative and significant and provide an estimate of the oil-democracy demultiplier. Moreover, we obtain an indicator of the surplus/deficit of democracy, highly correlated with the revolutions currently unfolding in the Mediterranean.

A simple dynamic general-equilibrium model of savings and investment is populated by agents with Kreps-Porteus preferences. Households are heterogeneous in their risk aversion, which explains the negative relationship between aggregate investment and aggregate volatility. Agents trade riskless assets to share the aggregate risk, so that in equilibrium a higher volatility increases the certainty-equivalent future return for low-risk-averse individuals, which hold a long position in risky assets. The certainty-equivalent return may also increase for high-risk-averse agents, who hold safe assets. In response to this rise, savings and investment decrease due to a limited willingness to substitute consumption over time

The author’s point is that the greatest advantage of a democratic firm system is a major impulse to political democracy. The idea that economic democracy furthers political democracy will sound fairly obvious not only to students of historical materialism, but also to anyone believing that economic activity plays a major part in shaping the social context in which we live. This idea is variously linked to Gramsci’s concept of ‘‘passive revolution’’, on which the author has been dwelling in detail.

This paper analyzes the relation between resource inputs and managerial effort in sport teams (or, more generally, in firms). The discussion is motivated by a theoretical model that suggests that clubs use managerial effort as a substitute of capital resources in the production process. In this framework, different levels of effort are always optimal decisions given its relative cost. Thus, the relatively higher effort exerted by small (compared to big) sport team is not a consequence of hidden information or incentive problems in the organization but it is a optimal decision of small team/firm to offset capital market restrictions. Managers in big firms, on the other hand, are not obliged to offer their maximum personal effort given that it can be more easily substituted by capital resources in the production process.